Thread by @RG_Horvath

1/14 Keating's warning was not 'brilliant' - it parroted ideas that were widely discussed in op-ed pages at the time. It was also proved wrong by history. There is no correlation between NATO's conduct and Putin's assault on Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/MikeCarlton01/status/1496962288716500997

2/14 The last major NATO enlargement approaching Russia's borders was in 2004. Since then, only 4 small Balkan states of negligible military significance have joined the alliance. NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia remains an unlikely and distant prospect.

3/14 As @McFaul has demonstrated, NATO-Russia relations have waxed and waned in accordance with the vicissitudes of Russia's internal politics, not Western conduct.

4/14 What drives Putin's anti-NATO propaganda, anti-Westernism, and aggression on the international stage is his domestic needs as a kleptocratic dictator who has abused his power for personal enrichment. Since 2005, he has exploited anti-Westernism in four self-serving ways.

5/14 First, he justifies repression by smearing his domestic opponents and critics as pawns of the evil West and its special services.

6/14 Second, he used the Western threat as a pretext for the dismantling of democratic institutions in the name of ’sovereign democracy’ and the regimentation of civil society to protect it from ‘foreign agents.’

7/14 Third, he mobilised anti-Western radicals, including civilisational nationalists, ethno-imperialists, neo-Stalinists and even neo-nazis, as a counterweight to pro-democracy protest and as the talking heads of a kind of 'authoritarian pluralism.'

8/14 And fourth, anti-Westernism serves to burnish his image as a patriotic leader defending his country, even as his cronies channel billions of dollars into a labyrinth of offshore shell companies and their families flaunt their plutocratic lifestyles in the West.

9/14 What is driving the current conflict is not NATO but the damage inflicted on Putin's image and psyche by the 'Navalny Crisis.'

10/14 During the past 18 months, the Russian dictator has been exposed before his people and the world as a despot who used banned chemical weapons to try to kill his leading domestic political opponent.

11/14 And his corruption was documented in excruciating detail by Navalny's 2-hour investigation of Putin's grotesque 'dictator kitsch' palace at Gelendzhik. With 121 million views, it is the most watched Russian-language video in the history of Youtube.

12/14 Just as in 2014, when he was still reeling from the pro-democracy protests of 2011-2012, Putin hopes to reassert his crumbling authority and shattered legitimacy by attacking Ukraine. He will also try to use the distracting carnage of war to crush dissent at home.

13/14 Even as Putin's armed forces began their bombardment of Ukraine, his obedient judiciary was preparing to sentence Navalny to a new, much longer prison term.

14/14 Now, more than ever, it is time for Western commentators to pay attention to the struggle of @navalny, @vkaramurza, and @IlyaYashin and other brave Russian democrats who are risking their lives for ideals we are supposed to share.